Southern Tenant Farmers Union facts for kids
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| Abbreviation | S.T.F.U. |
|---|---|
| Merged into | Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen |
| Founded | July 18, 1934 |
| Dissolved | July 29, 1960 (26 years and 11 days) |
| Headquarters | Tyronza, Arkansas; later Memphis, Tennessee |
| Location | |
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Membership
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35,000 (peak) |
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Key people
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H. L. Mitchell Clay East E. B. McKinney |
| Affiliations | |
The Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) was a special group, or union, created to help farmers in the Southern United States. Many of these farmers were tenant farmers, meaning they rented land to farm, or sharecroppers, who paid their rent with a share of their crops. A lot of these farmers were Black people, whose families had been enslaved.
The STFU started in July 1934 during the Great Depression, a time when many people had little money and jobs were hard to find. The union wanted to help farmers get a better deal from landowners. They hoped to get more money or support and improve their working conditions. The STFU was formed because of problems with a government program called the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). This program was part of the New Deal, a plan by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help the country's farming and economy recover.
The AAA aimed to raise food prices by paying landowners to grow less food. Landowners were supposed to share this money with their tenant farmers. However, most landowners kept the money for themselves, leaving the tenant farmers struggling.
The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was special because it welcomed people of all races, which was rare in the 1930s. They believed in peaceful protests to get their fair share of the AAA money. They also worked to show that Black and white people could work together effectively. However, the union faced strong opposition from landowners and local officials. STFU leaders often faced danger and some even lost their lives.
In the 1930s, the union was active in states like Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. It later grew to other southeastern states and even to California. The union's main office was in Memphis, Tennessee. From 1948 until it closed in 1960, the STFU was based in Washington, D.C..
Contents
How the STFU Started and Grew
Farming in the South struggled after World War I because too many crops were grown. Also, natural disasters in the 1920s and 1930s made farming even harder. When the Great Depression began, southern farming was already in a weak state. To help, the government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the New Deal. This plan offered money to farmers to reduce how much they grew. This meant fewer sharecroppers and farmers were needed in the fields.
The AAA policies caused many tenant farmers to lose their jobs and homes. H. L. Mitchell, a socialist and former sharecropper, and Clay East, a gas station owner, saw that government money was mostly going to plantation owners. This left tenant farmers and sharecroppers without help. East and Mitchell started the Unemployed League in Tyronza, Arkansas, to fight for these federal payments to be shared. They succeeded in getting some aid distributed, and then the league ended.
The effort started again in 1934 when the STFU was created. Its main goal was to make sure New Deal money reached tenant farmers. Later, the STFU leaders wanted the union to become a strong group that could negotiate for workers' rights, like unions in big cities. But plantation owners often used violence and threats against STFU leaders and members. For example, the union's president, William H. Stultz, was arrested and threatened.
One of the union's first actions was to file a lawsuit against Hiram Norcross. This was to make sure sharecroppers received their fair share of government money, as the AAA intended.
The union wrote many letters protesting when hundreds of farmers were forced off their land. The STFU sent five men, including two African Americans, E. B. McKinney and N. W. Webb, to Washington to speak to the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace. They told him about the ongoing evictions of tenant farmers.
The STFU's first strike happened in 1935. Cotton pickers wanted better pay. Cotton planters offered forty cents for every one hundred pounds picked, but the union, led by H. L. Mitchell, demanded one dollar. After a few days, many plantations offered seventy-five cents, and some even offered a dollar. This was the union's first big success.
In 1939, STFU members organized protests in southeastern Missouri. Hundreds of cotton sharecroppers said they were being evicted because landlords didn't want to share federal AAA money. The Farm Security Administration, another New Deal agency, helped by providing affordable housing for 500 families. In 1939, they also gave $500,000 in grants to 11,000 families in the area. The protest eventually faded as different political groups argued for control, and STFU membership dropped.
During World War II, STFU leaders told members to find jobs outside of Arkansas's cotton fields. They created a system to help over 10,000 workers move to jobs in the northern and eastern parts of the United States. After World War II, the STFU changed its name to the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) and joined the American Federation of Labor. The NFLU then started working in California. There, they were involved in the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation strike in 1947. After a year and a half, the union successfully improved conditions for its workers. The union also organized 30,000 people for a strike in Corcoran, California, to fight against pay cuts for cotton pickers. This strike helped workers get their wages back or even increased.
Working with Other Groups
When the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) created a farming-related group called the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), the STFU joined them to become stronger. However, the STFU had disagreements with UCAPAWA's leaders and decided to leave the CIO in 1939. After this, UCAPAWA stopped focusing on farm workers and instead worked with food-processing workers.
By 1934, the Communist Party was willing to work with other groups, including progressives and socialists. They began helping farm workers and other organizations in the South to create a stronger "Popular Front." The STFU was one of the unions that joined this Front. The STFU benefited because these groups supported each other in protests and fights against plantation owners. Not all STFU members were Communists; many had different political beliefs.
The STFU was not always comfortable working with the Communist Party. Problems like money issues, lack of support, and different goals caused the alliance to break. By separating from the Communist Party, the union was able to keep its important alliance between white and Black workers, which was key to its identity.
Union Leaders and Their Ideas
The government money from the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) mostly went to plantation owners. This AAA program was meant to reduce food production and raise food prices to help the farming economy. But H. L. Mitchell, Clay East, and other fair-minded people saw that this program hurt farm workers, leaving many jobless. So, they created the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) and became its leaders to fight this unfair distribution of money.
The STFU's leaders, especially Mitchell and East, attracted many socialists and people who supported the New Deal. Clay East also helped spread socialist ideas in Tyronza by selling a popular newspaper called American Guardian. Because he sold so many copies, the small town became known as "Red Square." About 1,000 people joined socialist groups there, including a small but important number of African Americans.
The union leaders decided to let regular members have more say in how the union was run. This was called "rank and file leadership." It was sometimes hard to organize because some farm workers wanted the union to be very aggressive, while others wanted it run like a business. But as more people joined, the leadership from the workers themselves also got better.
Working Together Across Races
In the first STFU groups, there wasn't much racial tension because Black and white people lived and worked closely. However, when the STFU grew into larger towns, racial differences became more noticeable, as Black and white people didn't mix as much. In these towns, the STFU created separate local groups for Black and white members, with organizers of the same race to build trust. White organizers worked with white groups, and African American organizers worked with African American groups. E. B. McKinney was an organizer and the first African American to become a vice president of the union. Before that, he was active in the Socialist party with Clay East. Owen Whitfield was another important African American leader linked to the STFU.
Even though racial tensions were strong in the South, the STFU managed to get Black and white people to work together within the union. In Marked Tree, Arkansas, the African American local group invited the white local group to their meeting. In this meeting, white and Black members sat together and worked for a common goal. This made Mitchell believe that a united movement of all races was possible in other areas too. In fact, most of the union's important events and meetings included people of all races.
Mitchell noticed that African Americans in the union often had a strong sense of working together and unity. This made them better at resisting unfair treatment through group action. White members, on the other hand, were often more individualistic and easier for managers to control.
See also
- Louise Boyle, a photographer who took pictures of STFU farmers in Arkansas in 1937
- STFU publications
